


foundations of excellence

by phalangine



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 03:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8781907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalangine/pseuds/phalangine
Summary: Charles finds a way to soothe the children in the time after Apocalypse.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahtzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/gifts).



Not long after Apocalypse came and destroyed everything, story time became a tradition in the mansion. Charles never had one as a child, and it only occurred to him that some children might find a story before bed soothing when a determined-looking Jean marched into his office after lights out and asked, in a tone that demanded an answer, “How come you never read to us?”

Charles, who had been grading essays, stopped abruptly. “I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.”

“Well, you should do it,” Jean grumbled. “The little ones like you doing it during class, and it’d be nice to go to sleep with something other than what Mystique and Beast yelled at us during practice in our heads.”

She had a point, so Charles nodded and mentally filed away the suggestion until the next morning, when he caught Hank at the early breakfast.

“Did your parents read to you?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Hank tilted his head in thought for a moment before shaking it and shrugging. “Not that I recall, no. They didn’t really like being around me, what with my feet and all…”

Well, Charles likes being around his children just fine, and if they’re after story time, then he’ll just have to find a way to do it.

His initial plan to read a simple short story to each child at night was too time-consuming; most of the children would be asleep after the third or fourth child got through. The ones who didn’t get read to would be cranky the next day, both at missing the story and from staying up late in hopes of being read to, but Charles had no immediate solution. This was not an issue he had planned for when he built the school, and answers were slow to come.

In the end, Raven was the one who solved the issue.

“Just read to them all at once!” she exploded over dinner one evening following an impressive temper tantrum from one of the youngest children over not having been read to in over a week. “We’ll get everybody ready for bed, then go into the study. You’ll read to everybody at the same time, and we won’t have to deal with all this crying anymore!”

By some miracle, it worked. Sure, the youngest children tended to fall asleep early on, but carrying them to bed was hardly an issue with Hank and Raven around.

Taking advantage of his captive audience, Charles elected to err on the side of the keeping his advanced readers from getting bored. The little ones just liked the sound of his voice, after all, and the goal was ultimately to get them to sleep. With Apocalypse still haunting them at the edges, he specifically chooses stories that have happy endings. The current book is _Black Beauty_ , the copy Charles reads from a gift from a well-meaning but distant friend of the family at his birth. He cracked the spine for the first time the night he began reading from it, but any melancholy he might have felt at the kindly inscription melted at the enraptured expressions of his audience.

_“On returning to the cab,”_ he reads aloud, _“our friend was joined by his companion, who said laughingly, ‘I should have thought, Wright, you had enough business of your own to look after, without troubling yourself about other people’s horses and servants.’_

Grumbles erupt all around, the children’s fine sense of right and wrong prickling at the words.

_“Our friend stood still for a moment, and throwing his head a little back, ‘Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?’”_ Charles continues. The group of children, all dressed in flamboyant children’s holiday pajamas and robes against the winter chill, buzzes with interest. Charles does his best to hide his smile, knowing as he does how the chapter will end.

_“‘No,’ said the other._

_“‘Then I’ll tell you. It is because people think only about their own business, and won’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrongdoer to light. I never see a wicked thing like this without doing what I can, and many a master has thanked me for letting him know how his horses have been used.’”_

“Good,” says one of the older girls, who happens to be going through a horse-obsessed stage.

_“‘I wish there were more gentlemen like you, sir,’ said Jerry, ‘for they are wanted badly enough in this city.’_

_“After this we continued our journey, and as they got out of the cab our friend was saying, ‘My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.’_

“And that,” Charles announces, pleased at the sea of somber nods that accompanied the words, “is the end of chapter thirty-eight.”

“Can’t we read another?” one of the older children asks. The request is quickly echoed enthusiastically by the other, very sleepy, children.

“I’m afraid not. I’ve kept you up past your bedtimes already,” Charles points out. “Time for bed, all of you.”

Getting to their feet, the children grudgingly chorus, “Yes, Professor.”

Charles watches them go with a warm, full feeling in his chest that only swells fuller when he notices one of his students still sitting with his head against the wall, fast asleep. As the only adult around, Charles shakes his head in amusement and wheels over. Scooping the boy up proves slightly awkward as Charles does his best not to wake him, but ultimately manages to get the child situated safely on his lap. Charles even manages to get his charge to bed and tuck him in without waking him.

Job done, Charles heads off to bed himself with a happy grin, content in the knowledge that his students are safe and happy.

**Author's Note:**

> this doesn't fit your prompt 100%, but because it's a bit of fluff with charles bonding with the students, i hope it comes close enough that you like it


End file.
